370 



Minnesota Plant Life. 



In the Ijhie ])lilox the flowers are blue and each petal lobe 

 is notched at the end. The other phloxes have pink, white 

 or purple flowers. Of them, the downy phlox is soft, velvety, 

 hairy or downy to the touch. The smooth phlox is quite 

 smooth with pink flowers and the lobes of the corolla are longer 

 than the tube. The wild sweet-william, or common phlox, 

 looks like the smooth phlox, but has flowers in which the lobes 

 of the corolla are considerably shorter than the tube. In all 

 the phloxes the leaves are simple, not lobed. The Polcmoniitm 

 has the flowers of a phlox, blue in color; but the leaves are 

 pinnately compound like those of the ash. It is an herb 



about a foot high, with weak 

 ascending stem arising from a 

 short rootstock. The CoUoniia 

 has flowers of the phlox type, 

 aggregated in clusters at the 

 tips of the stem. They are 

 purplish or white, but the 

 leaves are alternate, not oppo- 

 site as in the phloxes. The 

 little Gilia of the western edge 

 of the state, where it is found 

 on high prairies near Lake 

 Benton, is a tufted plant with 

 flowers in dense heads, each 

 provided with a calyx, the 

 lobes of which are awl-shaped 

 and come up around the co- 

 rolla like five stiff bristles. The leaves are small, pinnate and 

 spiny. 



Waterleafs, The waterleaf family includes two waterleafs, 

 one Ellisia and two Pliacclias. The waterleafs are herbs with 

 large, pinnately cleft leaves and violet or purplish flowers devel- 

 oped in unfljels or cymes. They are exceedingly abundant on 

 the level, damp floors of woods along streams through the south- 

 ern part of the state. The Virginia waterleaf has the stamens 

 a good deal longer than the corolla and the stamen-stalks are 

 hairy. The other waterleaf, called the a])pen(lage(l waterleaf, 

 has stamens but verv little longer than the corolla. Another 



Fig. 176. Virginia water-leaf. After Britton 

 and Brown. 



